Summary: This is the single strongest indicator I have found of a company’s cultural strength.
I have had the pleasure of hearing Jack Daly and Tom Peters speak on a couple of different occasions. They both have a passionate and engaging delivery style that wakes up the audience and gets everyone fired up for the future. While the style and enthusiasm are great, it is the substance that really sets the two apart. Peters operates more as a futurist and an academic. He tries to predict which companies are going to do well and what the new hot trends are going to be. What he then winds up doing is having to defend his prior statements when the markets don’t move in exactly the way he thought or when companies don’t quite live up to the expectations that he laid out. Daly, on the other hand, focuses on his own business practices. Besides getting near immediate feedback to his theories, his hands on experience engenders him more to the entrepreneur while Peters has a big following of investors. I’m not bashing Peters – I enjoy hearing both of them but I’ve been able to execute on many more of Daly’s principles.
Yesterday I was able to roll out one of these principles at one of our new companies. I entitled it an “Empowerment Doctrine”. I brought it up at the end of our weekly all-hands meeting. What I scribbled on the white board was the following.
Is it right for the customer?
Is it right for the company?
Is it ethical?
Are you willing to be accountable?
Is it consistent with the company’s beliefs?If ALL of these are true,
DON’T ASK, JUST DO.
This was enthusiastically received by everyone. I was very glad about that, and a bit relieved. Reluctance would have been an indicator of a potential personnel issue. The first place I look for reluctance would be with the CEO. Some CEOs don’t want to let go of the reigns. They feel that they need to make every decision in a new venture because every decision matters in a new venture. But this just doesn’t work. By holding on tightly, they slow the company down. An autocratic leader eventually creates the culture whereby people defer all decisions or they leave. This will eventually spell defeat for the company as a many-brained company will always defeat a one-brained company.
That is not to say that reluctance won’t exist within the general staff. You can have an empowerment oriented leader but still have people unwilling to risk decision making. This might be an employee issue — perhaps they just don’t have the confidence of conviction. But, more likely, it is a cultural issue. If the company does not represent a safe environment where failure is tolerated, risky behavior will be quashed. Even when it is said in jest, joking around with comments like, “you better get your resume in shape if this doesn’t work.” puts people on the defensive. Second guessing of decisions starts occurring and the less risky alternatives start appearing the most attractive.
This doesn’t mean that mistakes won’t be made. When I laid out the doctrine, I said explicitly that we will make mistakes. But, when we do, we will learn from them and refine the boundaries around each of the questions.
Another source of decision phobia exists if the answers to the questions above are not clearly known by everyone in the company. Maybe the core values or the company BHAG haven’t been articulated. Maybe they have been articulated from on high but not internalized by the staff. Does the staff truly know the customer? Do they know what the customer wants? Having to answer these questions brings people together. A common vision is created and the company moves rapidly past bumps in the road that don’t need to be debated.
Time will tell if this truly sinks into the culture at this company. At least for day #1, it is on the right path.